Janet Echelman Quotes

I'm not sure that you can say definitively that some roles are better filled by consultants, but I would say that some projects are better handled by consultants.

My favorite days are the ones where I deal only with my own team, design, marketing, working on the next accessories collection.

Architecture is by definition a very collaborative process.

Society needs people who can manage projects in addition to handling individual tasks.

Architects work in two ways. One is to respond precisely to a client's needs or demands. Another is to look at what the client asks and reinterpret it.

I am not the kind of designer who is racing to the finish line, so while collaborations are important for our growth, each and every one has to be strategic and well-timed with what we have going on internally.

I'm a designer, producer and I am hands-on for every project I undertake. The creative side of what I do is really something I think people overlooked for a while.

Despite the persistent image of the architect as a heroic loner erecting monumental edifices through sheer force of will, the building art has always been a highly cooperative enterprise.

I don't design cars. I'm not a designer. I know what I desire to be built, I know what the end result is, the horsepower, the competition we'll be working against - but I leave it to the people who work with me to put it all together. I don't do anything.

Today I have 35 people who work in the club and associated businesses.

We worked with the engineers in the design and construction and testing phases in those various areas, then we would get back together at the end of the week and brief each other as to what had gone on.

Most development doesn't make it to series. So you want the writer and director to have a really good experience with development because, if it doesn't work out, you want to work with them again. You have to know their work really well, know the drafts really well, and when you give notes, you need to have really thought them through.

Due to my business commitments, I am faced with time constraints and have not been able to personally spend as much time as I would like on my causes. These efforts are handled by my team of several people.

I studied to be an architect. And I find tremendous similarities between building a company and the design process. Businesses have to do their planning on the fly in a fashion similar to an architect sketching.

Being a rock widow is not my job, so I would hire people to do it for me.

We worked out a lot of bugs and figured out who was working and who wasn't and how this beast functions. It was a lot bigger than we actually thought, and now we have a well-run ship where it feels I can actually have time to imagine and not just stress out about everything.

All businesses require capital, management and labor, and business executives, wanting to grow and maintain profitable enterprises, have a strong incentive to keep costs, including labor, as low as possible.

One thing I've had to realize in my career is that I can't do it all. Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make sure we're writing the next hit. There are other people out there, and that's what they do every day, and they have strengths that I don't have.

I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron's invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture.

I just put people together. I just identified jobs that have to be filled. And then I have to go out and find the right people and make sure they talk to each other. So I'm the beneficiary of good things that other people do. I get credit for that. If they don't do a good job, I get the blame for it.

I've been on a lot of sets, and I've been around a lot of directors, and I've been working for many years now, but stepping in the shoes of being the decision maker and the guy that everybody is relying on at some point, yeah, it was challenging for sure. One thing is that you're responsible for a large group of people.

I spend a lot of time building teams at both businesses - both The Trump Organization and my own - and thinking about who to hire to supplement the team and allow us to best achieve our goals.

I got into architecture via fine arts, and I was a sculptor myself, and I have always involved artists in my projects. When I say 'involved,' I mean I always bring artists in at the beginning projects before they're built and say, 'Will you do a room? Will you do a sculpture floating in mid-air? Will you make a chimney? Will you do something?'

I'm like a conductor. I come up with ideas, and I get all these people to make great music together. I have a team of really talented assistant designers. I have architects in my office. People I trained from the beginning in menswear, womenswear, and home. I have a great team who know what I want and feel and translate that into beautiful results.

Don't bring on the design engineers too soon. One of the worst things you can do in the early phases of a project is to bring on a bunch of detailed design engineers and then not give them clear direction and close supervision.